Melting over the Greenland ice sheet shattered the seasonal record on August 8 – a full four weeks before the close of the melting season, reports Marco Tedesco, assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at The City College of New York.

When the sea level data comes out for the summer, is it going to show any correlation to this event? Probably not, because temperatures going slightly above freezing for two hours is a total non-event which happens frequently, and which only a pin-head would care about.

“The extreme melting detected at high elevations in mid July (covering ~ 97 % of the Greenland ice sheet, see image on the left) generated liquid water that refroze after a few days, changing the physical properties of the snowpack but very likely NOT contributing to the meltwater that run offs from the ice and can potentially contribute to sea level rise.”